The Glorious Return of Matthew Lillard

Yes, he's coming back. Also today: news from pilot season, the USA network just keeps getting weirder, and a Showtime series finds its villain.

Alexander Payne, one of our all-time favorite directors, is making a movie called The Descendants with George Clooney that has just added some new cast members. Joining Salt 'n Pepa in the flick will be perky-sad stalwart Judy Greer, non-Oscar winning Beau Bridges, the rumpled Robert Forster, and, strangely, Matthew Lillard. Yes, the villain from Scream who is not Skeet Ulrich. (Spoiler alert?) Oh he was also in Without a Paddle, that Noel Coward comedy of manners starring Seth Green and Dax Shepard. Pretty sure this is a promotion. [Variety]

Colm Feore — Canada's answer to the question "What if Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey had a baby?" — is considering joining the cast of Showtime's upcoming period series The Borgias. The show is set in 1492 and is about the powerful Italian family that controlled the papacy and pretty much did whatever the hell they wanted. Feore would play the non-Borgia nemesis of Jeremy Irons. Is it wrong that I'd feel better about this project if it was on HBO? [THR]

Moody technician David Fincher is staking his claim to two upcoming films. He'll first direct Pawn Sacrifice, a terribly-titled biopic about wayward chess prodigy Bobby Fischer. Will the film incorporate his Jew-hating? Who knows. But I'm curious to find out. After that, Fincher might move on to the film adaptation of Stieg Larson's book that everyone buys at the airport, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. That sounds good. After three non-violent movies — Benji Button, the Fischer thing, and the upcoming Facebook movie — it's about time Fincher got back to the murdering, which he can be so very good at. And so very bad. [Variety]

The USA network, steadily giving entire series to that one actor you remember from that one thing, has picked up a new series about a lady lawyer. Facing Kate, about Sarah Shahi being a lawyer with Ethan Embry (only on USA!), will air twelve episodes. The network recently picked up another woman-centric series, Covert Affairs, starring Piper Perabo (yes, the Piper Perabo), the cute nerdy kid from Popular, and Blake Lively's brother. Weirdest network ever. [THR]

Speaking of Christopher Gorham! (Nerd from Popular.) He just got cast in a big feature film starring Terrence Howard, Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, and Patrick Wilson (was it cast by USA?) called The Ledge. It's about a guy (Hunnam, from Young Americans) standing on a ledge threatening to jump and the policeman (Howard, who doesn't use normal toilet paper) who's trying to negotiate the scene down below. Gorham plays Hunnam's roommate. Ohhhh, roommate. I get it. He's killing himself because he's gay, right? [THR]

Forest Whitaker is likely to star in an upcoming movie about an American tourist couple that befriends a Shanghai street kid who changes their lives. Without any evidence to suggest this, I'm just going to go ahead and assume it's a Chinese version of Annie. Starring Forest Whitaker. Exciting. [Variety]

Pilot season news! Mary Steenburgen will be playing a mom in a show called Southern Discomfort. Jimmy Smits is playing "a by-the-book Supreme Court Justice who excuses himself from the bench to go into private practice and fight constitutional injustices" alongside Popular actress Carly Pope (the world is smallll). The magnificent Kerri "Trudy Wiegel" Kenney has been cast in the IRS comedy Tax Man. And there is a show called Friends With Benefits currently being worked on in Hollywood, because it is apparently 1999 over there. [THR]